Obama: Democrats don't think politics 'sexy' enough

Rep. David Jolly is sworn in after defeating Alex Sink in Florida special election.

Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images

Pres. Barack Obama says Democrats need to think politics are "sexy" to avoid being clobbered in non-presidential elections later year. He made the comment during a high-dollar dinner benefiting the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Thursday, stressing that it was imperative for Democrats to encourage constituencies to make it to the polls.

Mr. Obama has been sagging in polls for months, Democrats are trailing in key Senate races, and a loss by heavily financed Democrat Alex Sink in Florida's special election for Congress could be ominous signs for Democrats in November.

Already governing largely by executive order, Obama fears that he will not be able to carry out his agenda with a Republican Senate and Congress.

Midterm elections typically favor of the party that is not in the White House. However, despite a disastrous roll out of the unpopular Obamacare law, foreign policy that is in chaos and a painfully slow economic recovery that is in its sixth year, Mr. Obama on Thursday claimed Americans agreed with the Democrat Party's direction.

"The problem is not that the American people disagree with us on the issues," Obama said.

The top politician in the U.S. said, instead, "that politics in Washington have become so toxic that people just lose faith and finally they just say, you know what, I'm not interested, I'm not going to bother, I'm not going to vote. And that's especially true during midterms," he added.

Meanwhile, Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin caught the administration flat-footed after Russian troops invaded Crimea, quickly declaring it part of the Russian Empire after rebuffing Secretary of State John Kerry's ill-fated attempts at diplomacy. Despite a last-ditch effort by Kerry in London last week, Putin signed a bill making Crimea part of Russia on March 21, 2014.

Despite Mr. Obama's contention that the American people agree with his party on the issues, Democrats are increasingly alarmed about their mid-term election fortunes which has led to uncharacteristic criticism about Mr. Obama including bitter complaints that his administration and its policies, foreign and domestic, have left them in the lurch.